Cheers to love enduring

“The Real Thing”

Performance by the Pittsburgh Playhouse Repertory Company (“The REP”)… “The Real Thing”

Performance by the Pittsburgh Playhouse Repertory Company (“The REP”)

Pittsburgh Playhouse

222 Craft Ave., Oakland

Through Sept. 24

Tickets $18 – $22

(412) 621-4445

The Pittsburgh Playhouse Repertory Company’s production of “The Real Thing” brings to life all of the fire, eloquence and wit of Tom Stoppard’s original. The play presents a whirlwind of viewpoints as to what love really is and entails, each represented by one of the contrasting main characters.

Randy Kovitz stars as Henry, a cynical, ferociously witty playwright who remains doggedly loyal to love, once he has found it. Annie, Henry’s second wife, is played by Lisa Ann Goldsmith, whose fiery hair, tall stature and forceful vocal delivery demand attention.

Their characters are brought into definition by Rebecca Harris (Charlotte, Henry’s first wife) and Jason McCune (Max, Annie’s first husband). Lesser but still crucial roles are played by Robin Abramson (Debbie, Henry’s and Charlotte’s daughter), Joel Ripka (Billy, the young actor with whom Annie has an affair) and Jarrod DiGiorgia (Brodie, a political prisoner who prompts Annie and Henry to fight bitterly).

The play opens with Max and Charlotte, speaking with all of the familiarity and intimacy of a husband and wife, engaged in a bitter dispute. The dispute is left unresolved; just moments after the audience’s interest is peaked by Max’s accusations of Charlotte’s infidelity, we see the two again laughing and joking casually.

We soon learn that Max and Annie are not in fact married to each other but are instead actors starring in a play produced by Henry, a professional writer. It is not accidental that Stoppard chose this scene to open the play with — the theme of the “mistaken argument” runs throughout the piece, particularly in Henry’s later mistake of becoming so jealous of his wife Anne’s adopted lover that he fails to see how his own inadequacies have led her to him.

Through the play’s many breakups and reconciliations, Stoppard explores different conceptions of what love is and different ideas about the rights and obligations lovers have with respect to one another.

The play’s staging is imaginative in its use of a revolving platform to move characters off stage and in its employment of dramatic, narrowed lighting at critical moments in the play. Together, they helped the play maintain the swift, unbroken pace in which it was written. Henry’s attachment to pop music, humorous for a character of such otherwise exacting standards, is presented to the audience through the use of song clips both on stage and during scene changes. The inclusion of these clips and the prominence given to them in the Rep’s production help to humanize Henry, a character who, given his formidable literary pretensions, might otherwise be at risk of alienating his audience.

The play’s most dramatic moments come in the slow reconciliation between Henry and Annie that takes place after we learn of the latter’s affair with a young colleague. Kovitz gives a stunning performance as a man torn apart by unfaithfulness: In his tense, shaking frame and long, absent stares the audience becomes intimately familiar with the grief of betrayal.

He clings fiercely to his conception of love as commitment in the aftermath of his betrayal: “I believe in mess, tears, pain, self-abasement, loss of self-respect, nakedness. Not caring [about an affair] doesn’t seem that much different from not loving,” he says.

As Annie, Goldsmith has a challenging role: Despite being in many ways the provocateur of Henry’s divorce and the cause of much of his later unhappiness, she is presented in a way that challenges the audience’s empathy. She calls out Henry for his belief that love is “like a contract,” declared once and in little need of maintenance: “If I had an affair, it would be out of need. Care about that,” she warns him. In the context of Henry’s writerly aloofness, presented in much of the first half of their play, her words ring true. “There are no commitments, only bargains,” Henry is told.

Despite her affair, Annie’s affection for Henry is obvious. “I love you,” she tells him. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” She defends her choices in a forceful monologue:

“This is me who loves you, this is me who won’t tell Billy to go and rot, and I know I’m yours so I’m not afraid for you — I have to choose who I hurt and I choose you because I’m yours. I’m only sorry for your pain but even your pain is the pain of letting go of something, some idea of me which was never true, an Annie who was complete in loving you and being loved back. Some Annie,” she says.

The fact that Henry and Annie remain in love at the end of the play, despite all the obstacles they have been through, is a powerful testament on Stoppard’s behalf as to the power of love. The production is as forceful and as memorable as Stoppard’s original, with spotless performances from each of the play’s actors.

Despite it’s simplicity, when considered in the context of the changes Henry has undergone throughout the duration of the play, his final line to Annie is as heartfelt and eloquent as any of his other, longer speeches. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m still your chap.” Even in a play as complicated and turbulent as this one, Henry’s line is utterly believable.